The House passed possibly the most economically destructive bill in a century on Friday 219-212, with 44 Dems jumping ship, and 8 Republicans all but assuring their defeat next year.

To simplify the issue: a Cap-and-Trade system charges energy companies for artificially set “excess” amounts of pollutants they put in the atmosphere, without offering any solutions as to how they are to reduce those pollutants in an economically viable way. So, with an extra cost incurred, the energy companies will undoubtedly have to make up the difference by passing the excess cost onto the consumer, raising everyone’s energy bills. It’s a massive stealth tax increase which also stymies energy growth because too many companies currently produce “too much” arbitrary CO2, which as a gas is a necessary component in the process of plant photosynthesis and a gas we exhale as a matter of our own biological processes. Our energy companies will slowly bleed to death, until the government eventually steps in to “save” them.

In other words, this bill is a big pile of sh-t for its stealth tax increases, poor solutions, and bad science. However, I would like to commend Boehner for his attempted House filibuster Friday (he attempted to read a 309-page amendment the Dems added to the bill at 3am the previous night, so Boehner thought he’d read it aloud to the entire House!). I hope the Senate has more sense.